Comments on RTID/ST2 Prop 1 is DOA

Hear hear.

And I like trains . . ..

We won't grow up until we stop building more highways.

Portland, a much smaller city,

I'm sorry, what? The population of Portland is 560k. Seattle has 580k. And Oregon, unlike dipshit Washington, has an income tax, so they can afford to actually do things with their money instead of having to cripple commerce every time they want to build a fucking bridge.

Here I was hoping a whole day would go by without seeing one of these guest bloggers emerge as an Erica Barnett/Josh Feit surrogate. Oh, how naïve I was.

Interesting line from a Time magazine post on Al Gore's Nobel Prize:

Climate change absolutely is a political issue, the greatest political issue of our time, and it will only be solved in the political arena, with all the mess and compromise that entails.

Prop. 1 is a messy compromise. But it's a compromise that tips the balance inexorably in the favor of transit, as Walt Crowley so deftly explained. If we wait to vote on a pure, "do no harm" light rail package, we could be waiting a very, very long time. And even then, there's no telling that will pass.

OK I ride my bike to work everyday and am what you might call a rail-o-phile. But come on, it's mighty tiresome to keep reading that freeways are evil because cars make carbon. They soon won't make as much carbon as they do now; see next-gen Prius (125mpg) and the all-electric Tesla. Don't fight the roads, fight the fuel.

Saying Seattle (metro area: 3.3 million) is about the same size as Portland (metro area: 2 million) because the populations within their city limits are roughly the same is like saying that Shaq and isn't much bigger than Emmanuel Lewis because their hearts aren't that different in size. I'm going to assume that commenter was trying to be wilfully provocative.

But seriously - more environmental groups are supporting Prop 1 than are opposing it. On one side you have Futurewise, Washington Environmental Council, Washington Conservation Voters, Transportation Choices and Tahoma Audubon. On the other side you have the Sierra Club that is willing to sacrifice the good in the name of the perfect.

@5 if cars were that good, busses and trains would use the same technology and be even better. I think it's very reasonable to use cars for things you need cars to do (make trips to places without infrastructure, pick people up at the airport, move, etc.). They're important equipment and they do jobs other things can't do. But road expansion doesn't help with those things, which require pretty much minimal road capacity. It's to help people bring 2 tons of steel with them to work every day. And that's what's totally unsustainable.

Also, with regard to bikes on the metro, it's great but if you're actually in a transit city, you shouldn't be able to fit the things in during rush hour :-) ... hopefully sound transit will have it too, though.

What #6 said. If the population within city limits were the only gauge, Boston and L.A. would be relatively small. The county population is a also good measure.

Multnomah County: 681,454

King County: 1,826,732

Chris @2: We won't grow up until we stop building more highways.

I would put it this way: We won't grow up until we start building more mass transit.

SDA in SEA writes:

So the only environmentally sane choice we have right now is to build as much real rapid transit as we can.

See, this is one of the many, many things that are so maddening about this sort of lite logic you hear from the Sierra Club crowd in this campaign. SDA in SEA just said here how we have to get going building as much rapid transit as we can. He just went through half the post explaining how, if we only had good transit alternatives, we wouldn't have to build so many roads.

And yet, when it comes to the politics of it all, he wants to put the cart before the horse. All those other people who drive far more than 80% of the time -- until they start seeing mass transit becoming a viable alternative, they're not going to be as inclined to support it. Almost as important, only with mass transit actually in place are we going to get more developers who have a vested interest in mass transit serving as a financial counterweight to the developers like Kemper Freeman who have a vested interest in, or simply a historical fixation with, sprawl.

If you want to build a solid constituency for mass transit, if you want to build a permanent majority for mass transit, then you build as much mass transit as you can, as fast as you can. We already know that, if you break down the dollars, this package tips the scale way to the transit side. But beyond that, this package sows the seeds of transit's long-term triumph because it changes the facts on the ground.

Yes on Prop one means 50 miles of light rail. Portland only has 44.

Cressona please provide any study that shows that the package or either piece will reduce GHG in the next 40 years. The only way to reduce GHG is to reduce what cars put out. Clean them up by, as Walt mentioned, going to electric cars.

If reducing GHG is a major factor then this vote is not the way to go.

cressona, I agree that compromise may be necessary, and that there is no single perfect solution, and that any transit package will inevitably leave some people unhappy. If this were funded in a more equitable manner, I might even have been convinced that adding a few more miles of pavement was a viable compromise in order to get more good light rail.

However this compromise is too much, in my opinion. And even if I was for it, Prop 1 still has too many people lined up against it. The legislature's bundling of the two initiatives in hopes of getting enough support will backfire horribly. Just the opposite is happening. This is a compromise that too many people on both sides hate.

@6 The size of the cities is relevant because the population/density of the city effects how tax revenues are collected and spent in the city. Seattle's "metro area" size has limited relevance for people who actually live in Seattle: people in the counties have radically different spending priorities -- and in most cases completely separate budgets -- from the 580,000 people inside city limits and, particularly, from the 250,000 or so who live in the urban core of the city. The City of Seattle has the port, it has the University, and it has the densest concentration of people in the state or county. These things set it apart from the "metro area" in many regards, not least of which being that the population density of the city makes our service structure completely different; different transportation needs, different utility needs, different infrastructure needs and priorities. In this regard, the 580,000 people living in the 142 square miles of the City of Seattle have a lot more in common -- both in terms of needs and spending priorities -- with the 560,000 people living in the 145 square miles of the City of Portland than either group has in common with a similarly-sized sample of individuals from their respective "metro areas."

Not that your basketball player analogy isn't cute and everything.

Giffy read the Times story? The 50 miles are not in any way guaranteed. In fact, ST can switch to Modified Bus Rapid Transit MBRT if they, after engineering, discover that I-90 segment isn't worth it or won't work. Rail will go to the burbs inducing sprawl but won't go to dense communities like Ballard, West Seattle, North Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Seattle Center, Wallingford etc.

Tri-Met (which is sort of like ST, but it controls ALL Mass transit in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties) is funded through an additional payroll tax above and beyond the State of Oregon income tax.

I've never understood why we don't have a more Tri-Met-ish mass transit organization up here. Take Metro, Community Tranit, Pierce Transit, Everett Transit, ST, and god knows what else is out there and put them all under a single umbrella... Tri-Met runs the buses, the Portland Streetcar, MAX Light Rail, and (soon) the first Commuter Rail in the area.

The fist MAX line opened in 1986, making it more like 23 years ahead of us...if you count the 8.3 miles currently under contruction down there, I believe the total miles goes to 52, and it will be done around the time our first line starts up.

SDA in SEA @13:

And even if I was for it, Prop 1 still has too many people lined up against it. The legislature's bundling of the two initiatives in hopes of getting enough support will backfire horribly. Just the opposite is happening. This is a compromise that too many people on both sides hate.

SDA, I appreciate the civility. I'm not used to that from the regular Slog authors. So if you believe this package is going to lose by 20 points, how do you explain that it's still holding up at 53% in the last Elway poll. At worst, that a +6-point margin.

As for how inequitable the funding is—I mean, come on, this is the state of Washington, where just about everything gets funded by sales tax, where there's enormous opposition any time the gas tax is increased, and look how well we've done holding up MVETs. I feel like saying, if you think a 0.4% increase in the sales tax is so inequitable, where were you when King County Metro got its however many percent increase (wasn't that 0.5%)? If you think that's so inequitable, what are you doing living here in Washington in the first place?

I know that last question is a real jackass rhetorical question. The only reason I ask it is, I could just as well ask myself, "If you think this region is so hopeless when it comes to building mass transit, what are you doing still living here?" Well, after this package fails and this region enters the next round of agonizing and hand-wringing, I imagine I will, slowly but surely, start packing my bags—as painful as that is—and start looking for some other city whose actions match its rhetoric.

Prop 1 is a fucking joke. The idiots who are backing it argued against monorail because, pointing to an $11B finance plan that was never approved, it cost too much. At $768M/mile, monorail's FAKE number is the same as Sound Transit's projected number. Except let's remember, Sound Transit's first line cost twice it's projection and is years behind schedule.

I want rail as much, if not more, than the next guy or gal. But not if it bankrupts our future. NO WHERE in the WORLD does light rail cost as much as it does here. Build more of the Light Rail where business growth is -- like the Eastside -- and less in politically-based communities like those of Julia Patterson and John Ladenburg.

Sound Transit is also the ONLY light rail project in the world that doesn't adequately serve the central city. I'm sorry, but West Seattle has more people in it than most of Congressman Adam Smith's entire district (see Julia Patterson and John Ladenburg, above). But is West Seattle served? Noooooooo. Is Queen Anne/Magnolia/Ballard/Fremont/Wallingford/Green Lake/Phinney Ridge/Greenwood/Broadview or Shoreline served? There are more people in those neighborhoods than in the Lynnwood/Everett area.

Only in Seattle can we fuck up transit so badly, and try to justify it so righteously.

This isn't about waiting for the perfect, waiting for the pure. It's about waiting for a competant plan. Until then, I will, like the author, drive 80% of the time and spend the remaining 20% on a bus, pining for the day when we have an effection regional transit authority, like Portland does.

Whatever @15: Rail will go to the burbs inducing sprawl but won't go to dense communities like Ballard, West Seattle, North Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Seattle Center, Wallingford etc.

Whatever, if you assume suburbs=sprawl, then your understanding of land use is about as sane as your understanding of global warming.

Leave it to Seattle to pioneer the theory that people who live in sprawling development themselves (so long as that sprawl is within the city limits) can accuse density outside the city limits of being sprawl. Density is sprawl. Kinda Orwellian.

P.S. Whatever, I suggest you run some of your original notions about global warming by Al Gore. I'm sure he would love to hear them. Maybe he'll even get on the ball and start fighting against transit, rather than for it.

Where's My Monorail? @18:

Prop 1 is a fucking joke. The idiots who are backing it argued against monorail because, pointing to an $11B finance plan that was never approved, it cost too much. At $768M/mile, monorail's FAKE number is the same as Sound Transit's projected number. Except let's remember, Sound Transit's first line cost twice it's projection and is years behind schedule.

Sorry, friend. I sweated blood for the monorail, but I don't believe in "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." I'm backing Prop. 1. I want mass transit, whatever particular flavor it is.

And you have your numbers wrong on the cost per mile. Maybe it is $700-some-million-per-mile to tunnel to the university, but the overwhelming majority of the line is a small fraction of that cost, and you know it. From today's Seattle Times:

The figures include a 20 to 30 percent cushion, transit officials say — and the numbers are huge, at an average of $200 million a mile.

Great post. It's strange that the Pro-RTID/ST2 people can't tell they've lost the margin of voters who normally put transportation issues over the top ... it's like they're all stuck with their heads in denial.

They just don't grok that Global Warming is NOW.

Not tommorrow.

And trying to pass a GOP-created RTID ballot with a watered-down ST2 just doesn't fly anymore.

Especially when we all know we'll be paying to reverse what they did by 2020, while still paying the taxes for another 30 years ...

@7 - you know that the "other environmental organizations" that are for RTID/ST2 have about 1/10th the total membership that the Sierra Club has, right?

Zing.

"For where I live, and when and where I need to go, it just isn't practical to take transit much more than that. In my car, I can get to the central part of the city in 15-20 minutes. By bus, it takes 30 minutes to an hour. If I go at odd times, I might have to wait an hour for a bus to come by. So unless I have lots of time to kill, I usually end up driving. But if reasonably effective, reasonably rapid transit were an option, I could and would dramatically cut down my driving"

I, I, I, Me, I, Me, Me, I, I....

Was this a spoof? Jack issue? Larry Craig guest column?

"Riding my bike" isn't an option for 99% of the region's population. And if we followed the loony tunes Sierra Club method, everybody would pile into Seattle (one-fifth the region's population) and leave their sinful sprawling ways behind...and then the hippies-turned-rail-opponents would complain about million dollar shacks, and bus rapid gridlock.

Sounds like a green utopia to me. No wonder Sierra Club dabbles in extremist population-control theories from time to time.

"Also conspicuously absent: no mention at all is made of the Viaduct (the elephant in the room). How can a major roads package completely ignore the entire issue of the Viaduct?"

Maybe JDA hadn't transplanted from Ohio until last year? 'Cuz, the year before - 2005 - the Sierra Club, Ron Sims, Chris Van Dyk (all the yahoos) lined up in lock-step to get behind the regressive 9¢ gas tax increase (no transit) to raise $8.5 billion for 15 years worth of pavement.

Like magic, when light rail is introduced to the mix (in a big way) the phony "Greens" go south. Hmmm, is it the Polar Bears, or the light rail? Tough nut to crack, there!

Face it, the Sierra Club gor pushed down this path by a handful of bitter and disgruntled members within their ranks (you know who you are).

What do all bitter and disgruntled Seattleites do? They try to kill light rail, that's what.

Correction, occasionally they pause to do other stupid stuff: in 2000 they took a break to defeat Al "big oil" Gore, and in 2001 they took another break to fight free trade. Anybody care to check the tags on those "free with Sierra Club membership" backpacks and duffel bags? (hint: your free gift comes with a big overseas carbon footprint)

I know, I'm off topic. But I think this was a fake topic to begin with.

but, just for good measure:

" If we had good light rail over to the east side, we wouldn't be clamoring to build bigger bridges and wider freeways."

Maybe the spoof writer is totally confused, and actually supports a "yes" vote? He knows the No campaign is lined up in unison to stop light rail from crossing into Kemperville, right?

cressona: Wow, I didn't realize the 500-2000 new parking spots to be built per light rail station was considered "density." Some of the stations might have even more -- I didn't have a chance to look through all the station projects here.

We better start building more Home Depots and Wal-Marts if we want to achieve the cressonian vision of density.

I don't give a shit, I'm still voting FOR it, since this is probably our only chance to get 50 miles of light rail in one fell swoop in the forseeable future.

Also, I'm an engineer, so it means more work for me if it passes. Word.

Yeah, Global Warming is "now" according to clueless Will Affleck Asch - but apparently it wasn't "last year" when this Clown King was pitching for a re-built Viaduct, 70% larger than the current one, with all kinds of new capacity!

You see, the freeways Will like to drive on frequently are 100% carbon neutral. It's the "corrupt, lazy and fat" suburbanites who kill the fish, polar beas, and other assorted critters. And, even worse, freeways like 405 don't destroy Seattle's waterfront. You gotta "rise above it all" to make brother Will happy.

No worries, though. Will LOVES butchering the truth and contradicting himself! Watch he'll do it again real soon:

Cressona - still no data on why this will be good.

If the whole metro area had the same density as Seattle there would be 55 million people in it. A rail station with an apartment on top isn't density. But they won't have apartments, they will have parking garages. Seattle without any rail has more transit riders than Portland. Less congestion than Denver, Dallas, San Jose, and San Diego.

Sorry to interrupt your victory dance, SDA, but the Roads and Transit election is too close to call at this point. On the bright side, you have a 50/50 chance of not looking like an idiot on election night.

SDA,

You list all the criticisms of ST2/RTID, and I hear you.

I just don't think any of the "better" alternatives you suggest have any chance of passing in a population and tax base large enough to support the project.

And I do think this package is far better than doing nothing.

I would love light rail to W Seattle, Ballard, etc, but the fact is the relationship between Seattle and the rest of the region is so dysfunctional that they'd never vote to pay for all of that.

And that's partly because of the holier-than-thou subtext to a lot of this discussion, that living in the city is virtuous and living out in the suburbs is crap.

(I live in the city)

Will,

It's not a GOP-created bill, your very own State Senator Ed Murray is the guy who tied these two bills together.

Grow up.

Will (Build Elevated Freeways) in Seattle @21:

They just don't grok that Global Warming is NOW.
Not tommorrow.
And trying to pass a GOP-created RTID ballot with a watered-down ST2 just doesn't fly anymore.

Sorry, Will, but you lost your credibility on the global warming issue with the viaduct campaign. You didn't seem to grok that "global warming is now" mantra of yours several months ago when you were campaigning for a massive new elevated freeway. You could have campaigned for surface+transit, but you didn't. Instead, you campaigned for the greatest threat against surface+transit. You could have voted no on Measure 2, but instead you voted yes.

As for a "watered-down ST2"? Sound Transit put forward, I believe, three different ST2 expansion plans to the public. From the feedback they got, they went with the most ambitious plan. If 50 miles of largely grade-separated light rail is watered-down, I'd love to know what the full-strength plan was.

I hope everyone realizes that half of the tax dollars raised INSIDE Seattle are exported to the suburbs under this plan.

So a plan that spends dollars within Seattle would result in lots more transit in the city, including light rail to Belltown, Ballard, Fremont, West Seattle and the like.

Chris,

I seem to remember ST board meetings where the Snoho delegation was bitching because their tax dollars were being used to pay for the tunnel to Northgate.

So you have some figures to back up your statement? I'm really skeptical, given how much trouble the Monorail had funding a much cheaper project from the city itself.

@23 - "Riding My Bike" isn't an option ...

Um, news flash, we have more than 1 percent riding their bikes to work and more than 1 percent walking to work in Seattle. We're famous for that. Again, stop denying reality.

Not sure if it's carbon neutral when I walk to work. When I drive it's less than 5 minutes, and I get more than 36 mpg ...

You fail to understand that an underwater tunnel - by definition - uses twice the energy just for air circulation and lighting. The act of digging for it uses far more energy than an elevated viaduct.

News flash - Surface Plus Transit won - and Ron Sims came thru and doubled what transit he could so it could work.

But spending more than $200M/M when other cities can do it for $80M/M makes one wonder if we are choosing wisely even there - not that I wouldn't vote for that, inefficient as it is, since light rail around here is a fairly good choice in dense and medium population centers.

There's a reason why President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, Cressona, and denying reality won't change it.

There's no money in it for the Viaduct because we're not going to replace it. It's just going to fall down on its own, and we're going to start arguing about why we didn't replace it sooner.

ejamadoodle @5:

OK I ride my bike to work everyday and am what you might call a rail-o-phile. But come on, it's mighty tiresome to keep reading that freeways are evil because cars make carbon. They soon won't make as much carbon as they do now; see next-gen Prius (125mpg) and the all-electric Tesla. Don't fight the roads, fight the fuel.

I'll tell you what scares the hell out of me. These same Sierra Club people who say we must defeat this package because it has roads and is impure don't seem to have any appreciation themselves for light rail or why you build it. And when you scratch the surface just a bit, you see their support for light rail is about as weak as George Steinbrenner's support for Joe Torre. I'm afraid if some day in the far future we ever got around to voting exclusively on a light rail extension, the same Sierra Clubbers would crawl out of the woodwork and start crying, "Oh, do we really need light rail when biofuels and electric-powered cars are right around the corner?"

(As far as I'm concerned, other than on a small scale, biofuels are a joke. Plug-in electrics appear more practical to me, but they still have hurdles of their own. Even if they did become available at large scale and cost-effectively, many regions are not nearly as green as we are when it comes to how they get electric power.)

Chris--Sound Transit has subarea equity. Seattle dollars all stay in Seattle to build North Link, the First Hill streetcar, and to study light rail to Ballard and West Seattle for the future. Not a penny goes anywhere else.

Will (Build Elevated Freeways) in Seattle @34:

You fail to understand that an underwater tunnel - by definition - uses twice the energy just for air circulation and lighting. The act of digging for it uses far more energy than an elevated viaduct.
News flash - Surface Plus Transit won...

Yes, Will. Surface+transit won, and you (new viaduct) lost. As for that underwater tunnel, that was a separate vote. But I can understand why you would want to change the subject.

ST2 has 50 miles of new rail, making a total system of nearly 70 miles. It fulfills the vision of Sound Move back in 1995. It creates a regional system that is balanced between different areas of the region, so the claims that Seattle is shipping revenue out of town are plain wrong. The only way that claim can be supported is if the line between Redmond and Seattle is not counted as benefiting Seattle, which is ridiculous.

There are areas that will not be part of the system. The way to serve those areas isn't to stop this construction, it's to get this started as soon as possible and follow up with more transit as soon as possible.

It's not true to say that supporters of this are opponents of monorail. I would gladly have had both monorail and light rail in place (and supported monorail), though an integrated system is better in the long run. Pass this, and we're a lot closer to adding rail to the western neighborhoods of Seattle.

@35 - maybe we can use it for a planter.

@38 - you changed the subject first. follow the thread.

@39 - I never drive to Redmond. Kirkland sure. Issaquah. It's not like I take my Saturn to be serviced in Redmond ... um ... hey, look at the pretty puppy!

@34: Will, you shouldn't have cut off the end of Jamier's quote. The full sentence reads "Riding my bike isn't an option for 99 percent of the region's population." Your response was "Um, news flash, we have more than 1 percent riding their bikes to work and more than 1 percent walking to work in Seattle."

If bike riding works for 1 percent of the people, then it doesn't work for 99 percent of the people. See? You're both right!

@39
" Pass this, and we're a lot closer to adding rail to the western neighborhoods of Seattle."

Really. You think a study of light rail for Ballard and West Seattle on a project with a run-out completion date past 2020 is "closer." There's no money for rail for the westside - there's only money for a study.

Gosh, you know what. We don't need that study because we have the UVTN study, the Seattle Transit Study, the Green Line study and the presumably recently completed $8 million city surface transit option study. Why would I be impressed with a future study by ST. You think some new path or previously hidden approach miraculously appeared to justify a new study?

No, this ST2 is nothing but an interurban. And, since it's a simple majority vote, who cares whether it's a 20 point margin, all it has to be is one more NO vote than the total of the YES votes. I'm actually counting on Seattleites finally becoming sick of ST's decade-long string of broken promises.

SDA is pretty much right. We need mass transit to fight global warming, so why does Prop 1 waste money on highway expansion? The best evidence tells us that Prop 1 will make global warming worse.

However, SDA might be slightly off on Prop 1's 20% margin of failure. It's more likely that it's going to be very, very close -- all the more reason to make sure that you and all your friends get out there and vote Prop 1 down.

Cressona - "Oh, do we really need light rail when biofuels and electric-powered cars are right around the corner?"

(As far as I'm concerned, other than on a small scale, biofuels are a joke. Plug-in electrics appear more practical to me, but they still have hurdles of their own. Even if they did become available at large scale and cost-effectively, many regions are not nearly as green as we are when it comes to how they get electric power.)

Yes, Cressona but we could put the LR billions into alt gen getting ready to sell it to those without clean electric. And LR will definitely not do anything for any other place but here - and here it's dubious.

I know you don't want to engage in a real discussion of the value of rail backed by some actual numbers or even predicted numbers. 1 million people to move here and ST2 increases transit riders by 74,000. Please explain how that's a good plan for $23 billion YOE.

today's slog has some interesting posts regarding governance and comparing the metropolitan areas of Portland and Seattle.

a key difference not yet posted: the central Puget Sound counties are huge and individually regional in size. King County is twice as large in area as the three counties of TriMet.

TriMet has one large city. The RTID and ST each have four large cities: Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Everett. A key factor is distance.

the Legislature made a strategic mistake when they forced the three counties to plan high capacity transit and roads together. the forced marriage of the ballot measures compounds that error.

Under multi county districts, the tax rate is driven down by the greater portion of no votes in the outer counties. That is the risk in adding Kitsap.

Note that TriMet has a good LRT system and a good grid of frequent bus routes that are well marketed. Yet, the Seattle MSA has a higher journey to work percentage in the census data. I suspect that is due to the denser CBDs with paid parking: Seattle, First Hill, U District, and Bellevue.

if Proposition 1 is defeated, the RTID will die. The three counties will join the other 36 counties in having the powers of single-county RTID. They will also have the authority to form transportation benefit districts. in addition, ST may go to the ballot again.

Proponents have argued that this is our last chance and that Gregoire and Chopp will prevent ST from going to the ballot alone. But they can be shown the numbers: in 1996, with Sound Move on the ballot, the Ds gained seats in both chambers and Locke was elected Governor. the Ds would do well with transit on the ballot.

Proponents also sometimes argue that it will be many years before we get another chance to vote on high capacity transit. but history has shown the opposite is the case. The Forward Thrust heavy rail proposal was voted on twice in 1968 and 1970. The RTA was voted on in 1995 and 1996.

I find it amusing the best they can do on the pro-RTID/ST2 is try to dredge up personal attacks, while using anonymous names ...

(by the way, I use this one when I post on the Mac, just so I can remember where i posted it from)

So, I crunched the numbers, and ST2 (not RTID) includes the construction of 11,880 new parking spaces. This doesn't include an unlisted number of new parking spaces at several light rail stops (such as Tacoma).

To compare, Safeco Field has approximately 4,000 parking spaces. Qwest Field has 3,100 parking spaces. The entirety of Downtown Seattle has 15,000 parking spaces.

ST2 will likely be the largest parking lot construction project in Washington State history.

Reference: http://www.roadsandtransit.org/content/projects.php